To give up or not to give up on a student

Kak Gayah aka Associate Professor Rogayah Razak was lamenting on the fact that two of  her PhD students were " not making much progress even after 4 years .What do we do with stagnanted students?".  My immediate response was not to give up on them. I was one of those students who made her supervisor scratch his head for not producing anything worthwhile until the day I submitted my thesis for examination.


But, my supervisor, Ayahanda Prof Emeritus Abdullah Hassan, did not give up on me.  He kept pushing and pushing for me to finish whatever I had started seven years earlier.  Until finally in  1996, I graduated with a  degree Doctor of Philosophy from Universiti Sains Malaysia.


The reason why Ayahanda Prof pushed me, and all his students as a matter of fact is this - "It is a waste if our students don't complete their research projects." (https://www.facebook.com/ummul.ahmad/posts/2701571021917?cmntid=2705254594004&ref=notif&notif_t=comment_mention)


There were lots of non-academic related reasons for my inability to graduate within three to four years like my peers.  And I cannot divulge these reasons to others, including to my supervisor and friends.


I kept everything to myself and tried to figure out how to get out of it myself.  I only told a few friends about my situation, after I officially received a letter stating that my thesis was finally accepted by the university and that I will be graduating in the next convocation. I did not want to use what I went through as an excuse for other to sympathize with me, as any sympathy or empathy will not help my thesis or me.


I realized that his was not the best way to deal with my situation, but it was the only way I knew at the time.


To this day, in all honesty, I am not proud of my thesis.  But I keep telling myself that the most important thing is that I completed writing the thesis and the thesis was given a pass by the examiners.


Perhaps Kak Gayah's students are facing some kind of situation like me. And it's actually nearly impossible for any supervisors to separate -
(i) the genuine case of  student's not progressing well because she or he is hampered by  unforeseen personal difficulties and
(ii) the case of  student's not producing well because she or he is academically not able to meet the demands of the doctoral education which requires lots of independent work of high level analysis and evaluation.


In my case, besides Ayahanda Prof, my parents - Mak and Abah - were very, very,very supportive.  They even attended my viva.  As far as I knew, at that time, I was the first candidate whose parents were present at their child's viva.


So, Kak Gayah - you have to ask and probe your student, I guess, on their reasons and excuses for not progressing.


And to all my students, I hope that they will succeed in getting their MA and PhD, although they are faced with many challenges, both personal  and academic, and that they will never, never, never give up until the day they manage to get their scroll on their graduation day.  Amin.